In an emergency situation, persons involved or bystanders often contact emergency services by placing a 9-1-1 emergency call from their home or cellular phone. An emergency operator at a public safety answering point (PSAP) who received the call takes the information provided by the caller and may initiate or coordinate the dispatching of the necessary emergency service providers to handle the situation. Common emergency service providers that are dispatched include the police, the fire department, emergency medical services (EMS), and the like.
However, some callers may have call restrictions placed on their phones or their phones have an address or phone number that cannot be dialed over the PSTN or represented as a ten-digit North American numbering plan number. For example, a phone may be restricted as to what numbers it may call and who can call that phone. A child's phone may be setup so that the child can only call 911 or the parents and can only receive calls from the phone numbers associated with the parents. Calls and text messages to and from other phone numbers may be blocked. While these features may be advantageous to some callers, a problem exists when emergency calls are placed and a callback is initiated by emergency service providers. Because the phone number of an emergency service provider is not an “allowed number”, an incoming call from the emergency service provider may be blocked. Therefore, what is needed is the ability to provide a method to call back these restricted phones by use of a temporary call back number.